


Tabula Rasa

by audriel



Series: Tabula Rasa [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, It's just the beginning..., Surprise! - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audriel/pseuds/audriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He woke up to the cold... and to no memories.</p><p> </p><p>(And how the hell could he remain so calm?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabula Rasa

Cold.

It was the first thing that came into his mind. He felt cold all over, from the soles of his feet to the tip of his nose. He could barely feel his limbs, he felt numb as though his body was not his own. His mind was slow and sluggish; he came into consciousness only to slip back under to the same impression every time he lingered long enough.

Cold.

He hadn’t moved in a long time that it took time for him to consciously make any movement. It felt like an eternity for him to pry open his eyelids and he nearly closed his eyes back again at the brightness that greeted him. Everything was tinged white and blue, ice covering the surface and mist hovering before him. That was all he could take in before his strength failed him; his eyelids fell close and sent him back into the darkness.

Cold.

The next time he woke up and managed to hold onto consciousness longer, he was somewhat aware that he was standing in a small chamber although he couldn’t figure how he managed to remain upright all this time. And that he was… naked? His only response to that realization was a slow blink and would be an arch of an eyebrow, but he didn’t quite manage to test that out before he fell down under again.

Cold.

Noise.

When he came to consciousness again, it was entirely not his own doing. There were sounds from outside the chamber, quiet and muffled, but there was no mistaking it, despite not having heard anything, not even his own voice in his rare moments of wakefulness. The door, or what he guessed as the door, slowly slid open and his first reaction was to tense up, his hands at the sides clenched tightly, as though poised to strike. The part of his mind which attention was not at the change of routine wondered at the instinctive fighting reaction, which he responded to once the door slid open completely, giving way to a man with wide eyes in white coat.

He raised his arm in an attempt to throw a punch at the stranger, but his muscles, had not been in use for a long time, didn’t move as fast and as strong as he liked and the momentum only brought him forward. The clenched fist did land true on the surprised man’s face though, along with his frail (naked?) body which fell on top of the man’s (doctor, scientist?) body. Before he could do anything else, someone who was much more prepared than the man and outside his field of vision moved to subdue him. The sharp sting at his neck was the last thing he registered before he returned to the familiar darkness.

Warmth.

This first thing he noticed was that required less effort to open his eyes and that he no longer felt cold. The other change that came into his attention was that he was lying down, instead of standing up, on a bed with a pillow behind his head and that he was no longer naked: he was dressed in a grey cotton shirt and black sweatpants under the blanket that covered the length of his body. Slowly his senses registered more of his new surroundings. He caught rhythmical sounds from his side and somehow he knew that it was from a heart monitor. He also felt something attached at the crook of his elbow. His first reaction was to shrug it off, but his movements were weak and sluggish, but he faintly felt that whatever attached also swayed along with him. (IV drip, a part of him suggested, the same part that told him of the heart monitor)

He still hadn’t fully regained his mobility, he noticed, his limbs were still stiff and not responding as much as he liked, but most of all, he felt tired, as though he had just woken up from a long and deep slumber. He wasn’t sure whether he liked the new predicament any better. He could have woken up and opened his eyes, but he wanted to know his surroundings first before he gave away to whoever watching that he was already awake just in case they sent someone to check on him, or probably already had someone with him. He breathed slowly, picking up the scent. There was no specific smell on the sheets, but the air had the familiar scent of regulated air with a tinge of metal and ozone, which suggested that he was in a contained environment and that didn’t really narrow the places he could be. However, he was certain that he was alone in the room and that it was safe enough for him to open his eyes.

The lights were dim, which was quite a show of consideration of whoever had him. The glare didn’t hurt his eyes too much that they could easily adjust and started to scan his surroundings. The room was bare and Spartan. His bed is in the middle of the room with a bunch of machinery at his sides and an IV drip and another bag of unidentified fluid hooked to his elbow. There was only one way in (and one way out) through the metal door that blended almost completely to the walls without any access panel in sight. Then there was the faint flickering at the top corner of the small room at the direction of his five o’clock which he avoided to look at directly. He barely realized how he effortlessly took note of everything, from the layout of the room to the kind of material used for the furnishing of the room in one sweeping motion. Done, he settled back and waited.

Not long after he found himself awake in the room, in precisely 10 minutes, the door slid open to admit his first visitor (his first human contact), which was a professional looking nurse with white uniform, wheeling a tray with a pitcher and a glass of water. He estimated the nurse was in her late thirties, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun, not a strand of hair out of place, her uniform was clean and crisp, not a single crease seen. The uniform was neither too tight nor too short; instead if it was of practical length for easy movement, but not for hidden weapons, but he didn’t lower his guard as she closed the distance.

“Hello, Mr. Ferro. How are you feeling today?” The nurse, her name tag spelled June, greeted him with businesslike tone, as though he was any other patient. He had to hand it to her, she was good, she didn’t give away anything. She was not an imposter, he could see the skilled manner she actually took note of his vitals and made adjustments on the drip. He could also scent the sharp scent of disinfectant that lingered on her, not sprayed on her by accident. She was a professional medical staff whose main language was English and which was used to covert operations. (Well, that narrowed it down much)

“…Ferro?” He nearly jumped in surprise at the sound of his own voice, almost unrecognizable from disuse but his face betrayed nothing as though he was used to concealing his own emotions. However, his mind also zoomed in to the fact that the name didn’t feel familiar and instinctively he knew if his memory failed him, his tongue would be at least used to the name, but it was as foreign as his surroundings to him. It felt _wrong_ , but he couldn’t figure for the life of him, what was right supposed to be.

“Of course, you must be thirsty. Let me get you a glass of water.” The nurse walked towards the tray she brought.

There was a pitcher of water on the table, of which the nurse poured the water into an empty glass, oblivious of the attention given to her. In a brief glance, he knew that the woman was harmless (or as harmless as a nurse who was used to wielding sharp objects) and how he knew that, he couldn’t really explain it. He simply knew, and somehow the knowledge didn’t throw him off, didn't send him into suspicion or wariness of the man he could be. For all he knew, he could only be a simple man who liked to observe things to an extreme. (And yes, that was sarcasm, he knew the chances of that, he could give the exact figures if asked)

Warily he eyed the glass of water offered to him, and would have rather hold the glass in his own hand, but he could barely lift his hand as it was, let alone keep a hold on the glass in prolonged time. There was a brief moment of hesitation before he took the straw into his mouth. Inwardly he marveled that despite the appearance, the glass was undeniably plastic. (And how he would know that, he decided to simply take things in stride, somehow knowing its importance to his own sanity, but a part of him that he didn’t dare to acknowledge, whispered that he could use the glass as a weapon were it made of glass)

He didn’t immediately drink the water, checking the clarity from the light dispersion and taking a inconspicuous sniff of the water in the same time. He would do more if he had the strength, such as raising and swirling the water for better look on the water. He took a cautious sip, tasting it on his tongue as though he was merely wetting his dry and cracked lips when he was actually testing the water for drugs or poison. He faintly remembered doing this with darker colored water in fancier glasses. (Huh? So he was a pretty rich guy if he was used to such things? Or he was simply required to attend such high-class functions so often? But why was the need for such care?)

He finished the water in few gulps, eventually too thirsty to care whether much more potent and harder to detect drugs were in the water. However, he refrained from taking another glass, in case the water was drugged, he would want to be as lucid as he could. The nurse tried to get him to drink more, but he politely declined, which only involved shaking head, his voice was not quite up to it.

“The doctor will come to check on you” was the nurse parting word as she walked out the room, wheeling the tray with her. The gesture made him wonder at the care in limiting the number of items in the room (and he noticed that the items left behind were those he couldn’t use much for weapons). He was treated like a threat, the only missing treatment was restraints, but he knew as much as they knew that there was no need. He was as weak as a kitten; he doubted he could make out far enough before they could capture him. He resisted the urge to let out an unhappy sigh.

True to her word, the doctor came by at precisely five minutes, which confirmed his suspicions that there was someone else behind this, some organization, structured and experienced enough that they had strict procedures to handle such circumstances. The man was of average height and built with dark brown hair slicked back. Like the nurse he kept conversation in a minimum that he couldn’t glean enough information of who was holding him and where he was currently being held. He did have a vague idea of his condition from the reaction of the doctor and nurse and from the information they whispered and wrote down. Soon after he was left alone, it seemed they had been in strict orders not to remain any longer than necessary.

From what he gathered, he was of typical condition for someone who was just awoken from a coma, but at the same time he was oddly better, especially in his age. And that brought a number of questions to his mind, he could guess the ages of both of his visitors were, but he had no idea about his own. He didn’t even have the slightest idea how he looked like. It didn’t help that there was no reflective surface in the room.

This realization was enough to send him into panic, because of all things he couldn’t remember, he had expected at the least he knew how he looked like. When he realized that he remembered nothing, nothing before the freezing chamber he had been encased in and had been released from. He could feel his heartbeat frantically against his ribcage, his chest heaving to fill his lungs with air in recognizable symptoms of panic attack. The heart monitor screamed in warning at the frantic beat of his heart. He found himself clenching the bed sheets tightly that his knuckles turned white, regulating his breathing carefully while his mind counting numbers (starting from primes, and when he found it ineffective, he quickly switched into Fibonacci) in his mind. Only when he reached 514229, he completely regained his composure (the difficult spelling certainly helped, he made certain to enunciate them correctly instead in short)

Warily he listened for any sounds from the outside, wondering whether he would have any visitors. He doubted that the change in his vitals went unnoticed. However, they seemed content that he was stable enough that they didn’t send the doctor or nurse back to his room. He relaxed a bit at this, picking up his previous line of thought with clinical detachment. He didn’t know who he was and why he was where he was. If he had no knowledge of himself, how would he know what he was supposed to do next? Should he give the person who came in a chance or simply used the opportunity to escape? And what would he have for him if he escaped? He didn’t like that he couldn’t come up with any answer, and he had a feeling that rarely happened to him. This time he leaned back, not hiding the weariness in his posture. He was in their mercy now, and all he could do was simply take things thrown to his way.

After what it felt like years to him, while it was actually few days (he kept count, not in visible way), the door finally slid open to give entrance to a new visitor. This time was an average looking man (he already sensed a theme here) in wire-rimmed glasses and a suit with unbuttoned jacket. He had both casual and professional air around him in attempt to make people comfortable around him; his guess was either an interrogator or a psychiatrist. He was leaning towards the latter from his introduction and was confirmed as the man showed him a bunch of pictures. He recognized some of them as the typical nonsense for psyche exam, but it was the others that caught his attention. Pictures of people and places. It was them he paid attention to.

A beautiful smiling woman. A man elbow deep in a half-finished machine in a workshop. A dark-haired boy with brown eyes. A blue, white, red shield. A formal photo of a military unit. An old country house. A man in a tight costume and cowl over his face. A large missile. Two men standing side by side, one was an aged dark-haired man and one tall and bald dark-skinned man. A metal sphere shaped like the earth. A bored-looking young man with wrinkled robe and tousled hat receiving his college diploma. A modern looking building. A severe looking man whose eyes shrouded in darkness and shoulders bore great burden. A woman with her graying hair pulled back in a bun, wearing fitting black suit with a faint insignia at the side of her sleeve. A newborn with dark tufts of hair on top of his head. A wedding picture of a beautiful and happy couple.

All of them looked both familiar and unfamiliar to him as his fingers traced every line and color on the glossy surface. There was no eureka moment, no sudden recollection, no slow dawning clarity of what and who was in the pictures and their significance to him. They might be giving something of importance to him, but they might be as well as giving him nothing as his reaction would be the same. He would remember every picture like he remembered every face that came into the room, with excruciating detail from the freckles to the polished shoes and with the same assessment regarding their profile from their character to their habits.

He simply told the man point blank that he recognized none of them. Then the psychiatrist tried a different tactic, throwing words at him for once. They seemed random: adjectives, verbs, nouns, names, abbreviations. Nothing seemed to flip a switch in his mind, but some words felt right when he tried them on his tongue. The man was sharp enough to notice this and gave him the list for him to read out loud and check the names. He was half-tempted to check the wrong words, simply to know their reaction, but this might also his best chance to regain his memories, by letting them know what he had.

The first word he checked and was sure of was the name Maria and later, after other words, was Tony. Those two were the ones that he found his eyes strayed on more than once and he could fluently and easily pronounce. Then there was America, stark, Steve, shield, war, little, Hiroshima, howl, weapon, buck, nuclear (at this he had to cover the tremors that suddenly overcame him), cold, Antarctica, arc, Russia, Carter, fury… and death. His eyes and hand lingered at the word before slowly making a check next to it. It was the last word he checked and the last word he had the most certainty in. Wordlessly the man took the list back and excused himself, most likely to discuss and report his findings.

The psychiatrist made some more visits, trying other methods with varying degrees of success, but he was in no better state than he was than in the beginning. He still didn’t know who he was; he didn’t know whether he was Tony or Steve or Carter and what he was that he could know what made people and machine from a glance. He became short and snappish to every visitor, not hiding his frustration, but hiding his fear and anxiety. His team (the doctor, the nurse and the psychiatrist) took his moods in stride, the latter decided that sounding out and checking words were the best method, coming up with more lists for him until he had enough and torn the paper, which was quite a surprise for him, because he had just learned to hold his own glass to drink. Whether it was due to his behavior or his physical recovery, it seemed that they decided that something had to change. After a day without any visitors, at the usual time when his psychologist made his appearance, a new visitor came into his room.

He was the tall and bald dark-skinned man, with the insignia he briefly saw on the woman in the pictures shown to him at the side of his coat sleeves. The only difference was that he had an eye patch over his left eye. He wore all black, with a long coat for no purpose he could think of but for dramatic purposes. It certainly helped to emphasize the presence the man had. The man was only in the room for several seconds and already the stranger filled the room. Inwardly he was glad he had the bed raised so he could at least look at the man in the eye. Any lesser man would cower before this man, but somehow he didn’t, and merely raised an unimpressed eyebrow. He swore he could see the corners of the man’s mouth twitch upwards, but when he tried to look again, his face remained unreadable.

“Eduard Ferro.” He thought he was able to hide his distaste at the name, but the man’s lone eye managed to catch it. “But I suppose you know that it’s not your name.”

“And who would you be?”

“Nicholas Fury, Director of Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division, or SHIELD in short.” He could feel his eyebrows shot up in surprise; he didn’t expect the man to give away his identity so easily that he immediately grew wary and tense. He narrowed his eyes.

“So I should believe you just because you make yourself a leader of some sort of organization?”

“Actually I expected that you knew better.” The man gave a feral grin at this, which would be quite intimidating, but the only emotion he felt was annoyance.

“Well, if you think so highly of me, are you going to give my real name? Or are you going to follow your psychiatrist’s recommendations?”

“Which would be…?” The man tried to keep his tone bland, but he caught a hint of interest and amusement.

“To let me regain my memories on my own,” he answered simply, not questioning how he would know that.

“How would you know that?” Fury seemed to read his mind.

“It’s simple logic,” he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, concealing his own lack in understanding where all of this knowledge came from.

“You couldn’t recall your name, your family, basically _your whole life_ , but you could put your thoughts eloquently, and could tell whether I am lying through my teeth, or I might quote ‘…seems to have all of his functional aspects intact: normal intelligence, unaffected perceptual and linguistic skills, short-term memory, social skills, and reasoning abilities’.” Then without preamble, Fury threw him a brown manila folder, which he managed to catch with both hands quick enough that it didn’t hit his chest and fall apart.

The picture that greeted him once he opened the folder was of the severe looking man. He could be considered as handsome, but the cold and distant look in his eyes made him much older and imposing figure to approach, not unlike Fury, which reminded him of another picture they gave him before, of two men standing side by side.

“You knew me.” It was a statement, not a question as he lingered on the picture of himself (supposedly, he needed to check himself in the nearest reflective surface soon). The way Fury carried himself around him, the way he read him, the way the man expected his reaction towards everything screamed familiarity.

“I did.” Fury returned with the same absolute certainty. Somehow he had the sense it was how their conversations always went, with each of them offering clear, blunt statements, never bothering to hide behind lies and deceit, never second-guessing, always testing, always challenging.

He flipped the photo to find a name in large, capital letters, which he had no doubt was his without needing to test them on his tongue and he couldn’t help the rush of excitement than ran through his veins at the realization to find what was his but the warm rush turned cold as quickly at the sight of red stamped letters next to his name. Slowly he read all the information in the first page but quickly went through all the pages inside the folder, ignoring the fine tremors that had started since he noticed the red letters. It was an abbreviated version of his file; of his damn life he had no recollection of, that he was certain, but everything made sense. The chamber he was in, the state of his body, the fight and flight reflex, the unconscious assessment of threat, the chosen words, the calm under pressure. Oh yes, everything made _perfect_ sense. He slammed the papers on his lap roughly, staring at his shaking hands at the painful realization.

“Welcome back from the dead, Howard Stark.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ha! Did you see that one coming?
> 
> Considering how many characters in the comics who died and turned out alive, why not we do it with Howard? Mind you, the nicer one Howard in the movie, not the awful one in the comics. (not that I read the comics)
> 
> Thus starts the series of Tabula Rasa, an exploration of the person that Howard Stark with and without his memories.


End file.
